Jesus Heals a Paralyzed Man

John 5:1-29

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Introduction

We’re in the
third week of a series on seven miracles in the Gospel of John. The
Gospel of John is the fourth book of the New Testament, and John was
a disciple of Jesus, eye-witness of these events, and author of 5 New
Testament books. John organizes the first half of his gospel
(chap. 1-12) around 7 miracles performed by Jesus.

These miracles are
“shallow enough for babies to wade in, but deep enough for
elephants to drown in.” Their basic account of how Jesus
supernaturally met real people’s physical and social needs is
simple and easy to grasp. But they are also profound
“signs”—symbolic acts pointing beyond themselves to
Jesus' divinity and designed to lead us to faith in Jesus so he meet
our deepest spiritual needs (see Jn. 20:30,31). Let’s see
how this works with the third miracle, in which Jesus heals a
paralyzed man . . .

The Setting

Read 5:1,2. The
action has switched from Galilee to Jerusalem. Critics used to
claim that the author could not have been John because no such pool
ever existed—but the Bethesda pool has now been excavated
exactly as John describes it here.

Read 5:3,4.
5:3b,4 was not written by John and therefore does not belong in the
biblical text. It should be bracketed (as in NASB) or deleted (as in
NIV) because it is not in any of the earliest manuscripts, and where
it appears in later manuscripts it is often marked to signal probable
spuriousness.1
It is probably a marginal explanatory note (of 5:7) that later got
incorporated into the text—namely, it explains a local
superstition about the pool, but the biblical text does not affirm
this belief.

Read 5:5. Lying
among the multitude of handicapped people is a man who has been
paralyzed (as we’ll see below) for 38 years. With no
governmental social services and probably ostracized by the religious
leaders, this man has a wretched existence—spending
most of his daytime hours by this pool . . .

The Miracle

Read 5:6. Jesus
could tell by the man’s atrophied limbs that he had been
paralyzed for a long time. What kind of question is this to be
asking this man? He’s paralyzed, isn’t he? He’s
down by the pool, isn’t he? But the man’s answer reveals
the wisdom of Jesus’ question . . .

Read 5:7. He
doesn’t answer Jesus’ question! Rather, he focuses on
how he has been mistreated by others. The man is so beaten down by
life that his sickness and the negative results of his sickness have
become inseparable from his identity as a person.

Read 5:8. Jesus
redirects the conversation by speaking an authoritative word. As
with the royal official, Jesus (implicitly) promises the
man he will heal him, and issues a command by which the man is to
express his trust in Jesus’ word.

Read 5:9a. As the
man acted by faith, he experienced the supernatural fulfillment of
Jesus’ word. This is very different from the kinds of
“healings” done by the “healer-dealers”
today! Many are nothing more than rank charlatanism—staged
events designed to fleece sick people of their money. Others involve
mainly invisible ailments like insomnia, migraines, and back pain,
and produce only partial and/or temporary restoration. This healing
(like all of Jesus’ and the apostles’ healings) was
incontestable (everyone knew of his obvious sickness),
instantaneous (paralysis is gone) and complete (even
his atrophied muscles were also restored so that he could walk away).

SUMMARY: By seeking out and healing this man,
Jesus demonstrated both his compassion for those who suffer and his
authority over serious chronic illness. So much for the miracle—what
is the “sign?” What does this miracle reveal about
Jesus’ true identity as the Son of God and his ability to meet
the deepest spiritual needs of those who believe in him as the Son of
God (re-read 20:31)? There are two ways in which
this miracle is a “sign” . . .

The “Sign” –
Jesus is God

The first clue is
when Jesus healed this man (read 5:9b). He wants us to know
that Jesus healed this man on the Sabbath.

This begins a new
section in John’s gospel (ch. 5-10), in which Jesus is
portrayed as the One who fulfills Israel’s Old Testament holy
days. In each case, Jesus precipitates a conflict with the
Jewish religious leaders—which becomes the occasion for Jesus
to verbalize and validate a claim about his true identity.

That’s what
happens here. Jesus heals the man on the Sabbath, and this lands the
man and him in trouble with the religious leaders (read and explain
5:10-16).

God commanded
Israel to observe the Sabbath primarily to expression his compassion.
As their Creator and Provider, he commanded his people to take a day
of rest each week for themselves, their servants and their animals.
This was both a gracious recognition of creaturely limitations and a
way for them to express trust that God would meet their material
needs.

But by the first
century AD, Sabbath observance had become so neurotic and cruel that
it completely reversed God’s intent for it. Religious Jews had
become obsessed with what determining exactly it meant to "work."
In the Talmud, there are 39 classes of work forbidden on the
Sabbath—redefining the meaning of “anal.”2

So by healing this
man on the Sabbath and commanding him to carry his mat, Jesus was
deliberately committing a double-violation of their Sabbath laws.
Religious leaders viewed this as blasphemy against God—a
capital offense.

Interestingly,
Jesus does not defend himself (as he could have and did in Mk. 7)
by pointing out their misapplication of the Old Testament Sabbath
law. Instead, says he has the right to work on the Sabbath (and
display God’s compassion) because he is God!

Read 5:17. The
rabbis agreed that God could work on the Sabbath. “I have the
authority to do the same thing because I am God’s Son.”
To claim to be “the Son of God” was not some pantheistic
platitude (“God is in all of us.”). To a monotheistic
audience, this was a unique claim to share the same divine nature as
God (read 5:18). This is even greater blasphemy! And so they (and
we) can’t miss this claim, Jesus continues to elaborate on it
in 5:19-29.

Read 5:19b,20. He
claims to have unique intimacy and working harmony with the
Father. Therefore, this healing has the Father's approval in
spite of their censure.

Read 5:21. He
claims to be able to bestow life just like the Father
(1 Sam. 2:6; Jn. 1:4). They have no authority to tell
him when he can do this; he has the authority to do this for whomever
he wishes.

Read 5:22. He
claims to have the authority to judge—which belongs
exclusively to God (Deut. 1:17). He is not under their
judgment; they are under his judgment!

Read 5:23. He
claims to have the right to be honored in the same way people
honor the Father. Therefore, instead of persecuting him, they should
be worshipping him!

In other words,
this miracle is a “sign” because it reveals Jesus as God.
“The only One who had the authority and power to heal this man
on the Sabbath is God—and that is who I am!”

So what? So Jesus was either who he claimed to be
(in which case our only fitting response is to embrace him as our
Lord)—or he was a liar or insane (in which case we should
completely reject him and warn others to do the same). The
politically correct notion that he was a prophet or spiritual master
or moral philosopher—and that therefore we can just tip our
hats at him—is both irrational and immoral.3
This is why Jesus said Matt. 12:30a (read). Once you
understand Jesus’ claim, to refuse to bow to him and worship
him as God is to reject him. What is your verdict?

But there is even more to this miracle. It is a
“sign” that teaches us another wonderful lesson about
Jesus. He is not only God who deserves your worship—he is also
the Savior who is willing and able to restore you to spiritual life.

The “Sign” –
Jesus is willing & able to restore you to spiritual life

Jesus came into
this multitude of broken people, he sought this man out in his
hopeless physical condition, and he restored him to physical health
when the man believed his word. But this healing is not an end in
itself; it is a “sign” of Jesus’ offer to restore
you to spiritual life if you believe his word.

This is why Jesus
sought out the man again later and warned him that he was still in
need of a far greater deliverance (read 5:14). Jesus is not
saying: “God made you paralyzed once for some sin that you
committed—so you’d better watch how or he’ll do it
again!” He is saying: “It’s great that you are
physically healed, but you have a far more serious problem. Your
moral guilt will bring you justly under God’s judgment unless
you get deliverance from this.” Like most of us, this man
wanted only temporal solutions to his temporal problems. Jesus was
warning him not to neglect his spiritual problem. Good advice for
us . . .

This is why after
saying 5:8,9 to the man, Jesus says 5:24,25 to all of
us. Just as the man was healed the moment he responded
in faith to Jesus’ word (“immediately”), so
we receive eternal life the moment we respond in faith to Jesus’
word (“has eternal life”). “Eternal life”
is a personal relationship with God (Jn. 17:3), and it begins
now (not after you die)—the moment you put your faith in Jesus
as the one who can make you well.

No matter how
broken your life is, no matter how badly other people have treated
you, no matter how many past attempts to fix you have failed, Jesus
can radically heal you by restoring you to a love relationship with
God. You will still have issues to deal with because we still live
in fallen world—but Jesus will heal you at the most profound
level, he will give you a new identity as his beloved child that puts
hope in your heart, and he will initiate a healing process in every
major area of your life.

Jesus asked this
man “Do you wish to be well?” And he is asking you the
same question: “Do you wish to be well?” Do you want to
be restored to God today? All you have to do is admit that you are
broken and cannot heal yourself, and tell Jesus that you believe he
can make you alive to God.

Footnotes

2
For example, you were allowed to pick up a chair and put it down
somewhere else in your own home—but you weren't allowed to
drag it because this might make a groove in the dirt floor and thus
be "plowing. Women were forbidden to look in the mirror on the
Sabbath, because they might discover a white hair and pluck it
out—which was "reaping.” You could dip a radish
into salt, but not too long, for this would be to “make
pickle.” Sabbath laws also forbade healing sick people unless
their sickness was life-threatening. In the area of "carrying,"
you couldn't carry anything heavier than a dried fig. If a man
threw an object up with his right hand and caught it with his left
hand, this was carrying. But if he threw it up and caught it in his
mouth and ate it, it was not carrying because after being eaten the
object no longer existed. Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Tines
of Jesus the Messiah, Book II, pp. 778-787.

3
"There is no half-way house and there is no parallel in other
religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him `Are you the son
of Bramah?' he would have said, `My son, you are still in the vale
of illusion.' If you had gone to Socrates and asked, `Are you
Zeus?' he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed
and asked, `Are you Allah?' he would first have rent his clothes and
then cut your head off . . . The idea of a great
moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question
. . . the only person who can say that sort of thing
is either God, or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of
delusion which undermines the whole mind of man . . . We
may note in passing that he was never regarded (by his
contemporaries) as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that
effect on any of the people who actually met him. He produced
mainly three effects - Hatred - Terror - Adoration. There was no
trace of people expressing mild approval." C. S. Lewis, God
in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970), pp. 157,158.